FRÄNZI - End of an error. Three "Brücke"-Artists - One Model

By Gerd Presler

What was it that fascinated the three painters? In an environment suppressed by provincial, deadlocked standards, Fränzi embodied the kind of freedom that was maintained only in distant archipelagos, a freedom that expressed uninhibited nudity and the joy of movement. A celebration, an inspiration for the painters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: Jan 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9783960280972

Book preview

Fig.: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fränzi mit blauem Kleid.

FRÄNZI

End of an error – Three „Brücke"-Artists – One Model

What was it that fascinated the three painters? In an environment suppressed by provincial, deadlocked standards, Fränzi embodied the kind of freedom that was maintained only in distant archipelagos, a freedom that expressed uninhibited nudity and the joy of movement. A celebration, an inspiration for the painters.

Table of Contents

1. Fränzi Fehrmann – fascinating

2. End of an error

3. The eye of the camera – Kirchner photographs Fränzi

4. The eye of the painter

Sketchbook

5. Nude: expanding the concept

6. Fränzi draws

7. Fränzi in the studio

8. Fränzi in front of carved chair

9. Fränzi with mussel shell necklace

10. Fränzi with cat

11. Fränzi in the hammock60

12. Working together: the high point of Brücke expressionism

13. With Fränzi at the Moritzburg Ponds: watercolors by Kirchner, Heckel, Pechstein

14. Fränzi: a gift for movement, a source of inspiration

15. Sketchbook entry 12th February 1926: Reunion text

16. Discoveries in Kirchner’s sketchbooks: reference to unknown Fränzi pictures

17. State and church entries

18. Remembrance: pedestal for FRÄNZI

19. Imprint

20. Endnotes

1. Fränzi Fehrmann – fascinating

Fig. left: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fränzi und Pechstein in der Hängematte, Kohle, mit Tusche laviert, 330 x 430 mm.

Fig. right: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pechstein zeichnet badende Fränzi, Dube L 151.

In early 1926 when Ernst Ludwig Kirchner returned to Germany for the first time in many years and travelled to Dresden, he had a quite unexpected encounter. On 12 February at Kleine Plauensche Gasse 60 he met Fränzi Fehrmann, a model in earlier days: our youngest.¹

Because she had moved a number of times, it was not easy to locate her. But Kirchner very much wanted to see her, asked around, and then there they were sitting across from each other, leafing through a photo album and talking about the past, the days and weeks in which Fränzi inspired the three painters – Heckel, Kirchner and Pechstein – to create their most beautiful paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints.

Fränzi was still a child in 1910, gifted in her nuanced suggestions of a still dormant femininity and animated by an irrepressible need to move. For the painters she was an unusual model and a completely new experience; for the tender child it was a new environment where she could remove herself a few hours from the daily life of the family into which she was born on 11 October 1900, the last of twelve children (eight were still alive). Between the working mother and the hard-working father (a machinist, boilerman and metal worker), who would have the time to take care of the baby of the family? It was different with the painters. All attention was directed toward her.

Fig. left: Erich Heckel, Kirchner und Fränzi, Graphit, 340 x 432 mm.

Fig. right: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Stehende Fränzi und Maler Erich Heckel in der Hängematte, um 1910, 335 x 350 mm.

She was important. She was the focal point. "The memories of her youth are her best